Yesterday I sat through an impassioned internal meeting update on marketing strategy with colleagues from across Europe and North America. Debate raged and a variety of opinions were aired during the one hour session. Yet I was alone in a coffee shop and only one person spoke.
I was late to join as I had just left a client meeting so popped into a coffee shop, got one device connected to the GoToMeeting for the audio and the slides and then logged in to the Meetoo to join the debate.
There was some real fervour coming through the chat function around how we are now positioning some of our core offerings. What is always hard to gauge is whether a strongly held opinion is coming from a vociferous minority, drowning out the quiet majority. Also some were participating anonymously which always helps get real views out.
However what helped dimension the debate was the use of “likes”. Personally I have always just seen like functions as a nice but not particularly important feature. If I read an interesting tweet I’ll like it to lend my support! However in the meeting environment it became like a bottom up poll. Rather than the presenter pushing out a question to ask people’s views, the use of likes on the posts of those expressing each of the strongly held views gradually unearthed the relative weight behind each one.
With about 50 people in the webinar based from Nuremberg to Minneapolis, there is no way this discussion could have happened with audio or as a conference call. Not least because I would have drowned out the discussion with the cheery background coffee shop music I had no control over!
I love it when I hear passion in our people about Lumi. Without that it is hard to drive things forward. Then I finished my coffee, took my earphones out and walked off to get the tube.
Richard Taylor
CEO
